lesson/informations for losing weight.

i went online to search for "calorie calculator" cos i wanna know how much calories i burnt while doing certain activities but in the end, CaloriesPerHour.com attracted me. for my own reference. but maybe i can share with people out there who wants to go on diet too. or rather, for everyone out there to gain some knowledge about how a healthy diet produces a healthy body. i'm just summarising the informations. for full informations, do visit the website.



Learning to eat well and exercise is the only solution to long-term weight loss.



Types of Eating Disorders:

#1. Compulsive Overeating: Compulsive overeaters usually follow a pattern of binge eating followed by dieting. The dieting phase of this cycle often results in the loss of the weight gained during the bingeing phase, thus the term "yo-yo dieting."

#2. Bulimia: Bulimics overeat and then compensate to avoid gaining weight. Methods of compensation include fasting, purging by vomiting or taking laxatives, and excessive exercise.

#3. Anorexia: Anorexics have a fear of gaining weight and becoming fat, and often see themselves as being fat. In fact, they are underweight and remain this way by eating too little and using the methods of the bulimic to compensate when they feel they have eaten too much.



Diets can be so restrictive that they set you up for failure. Some are so low in caloric intake that you literally don't have the energy to continue with them. And while most diets produce quick weight loss at the outset, they often cause your metabolism to slow.

The result is that you have to eat less and less to keep losing weight. You quickly become discouraged, give up, and start eating like you used to. But now, with a slower metabolism, you regain all the weight you lost, and more.



Many Diet Plans Are Designed for Temporary Use and Lead to Temporary Weight Loss

A good diet plan will be healthy from the start, and will be based on principles that you can follow for a lifetime. In fact, if you have found the right diet plan, it will be one that you will want to follow for a lifetime.

The formula for losing weight is very simple: Consume fewer calories than you burn.

So, what should you eat? You would likely do well to eat mostly fruit, vegetables, whole grains, legumes (lentils, dry beans and peas), and limited amounts of lean animal protein (reduced-fat dairy, fish, chicken, and lean cuts of other meats). Also choose whole and natural foods over processed foods whenever possible. Foods with good nutritional value are not only healthy, they help you lose weight.



Unless you are excited to be following a very specific diet and exercise plan, do not try and change too much too fast. If you have been eating poorly and not exercising, both your body and your mind will have a lot of adjusting to do.

All the sugar and fat were actually quite enjoyable, and sitting on the couch didn't feel too bad, either. If you try and change everything too quickly the odds are greater that you will feel bad, get discouraged, and give up. So be patient.

A time will come when a healthy snack will taste as good as the junk food you felt bad about eating, and you will look forward to your regular exercise.



A diet based on simply eating smaller amounts of the same highly processed, calorie-rich foods typically results in hunger, poor nutrition, and only temporary weight loss. Eating tiny portions of concentrated, processed calories does not satisfy our hunger. We go off our diets and regain the weight we lost. When we do this again and again, it is harmful to both our health and our self-esteem.

Conversely, by eating foods that are higher in nutrients and fiber and lower in calories, we become satisfied eating fewer calories. We can lose weight even though we are eating more food.



Three macronutrients (protein, fat and carbohydrate) provide most of the calories found in foods.

Each gram of :
Protein = 4kcal
Carbohydrate = 4kcal
Fat = 9kcal

Heavily processed foods containing a lot of sugar and other ingredients of little nutritional value are said to contain "empty calories." Because they have little nutritional value, and little of any fiber, they don't keep your metabolism on and even feel like healthy foods do. Thus 500 calories of junk food does not have the same effect on weight loss as 500 calories of healthy food.



A gram of fat contains more than twice as many calories as a gram of protein or carbohydrate.

Many fat-free products have been filled with sugar (and salt) to replace the flavor that was lost when the fat was removed. Whatever you're eating, the formula stays the same: Consume more calories than you burn and you will gain weight. So simply counting fat intake won't do the job.



Low carb diets are based on the theory that restricting the amount of carbohydrates you eat will cause your body to burn fat to obtain the energy it needs.

Through a process called ketosis, our body fat is "burned" or turned into fuel to provide the energy we need. Our bodies run on ketones instead of blood sugar.

It is important to note that if you stray from a low carb diet plan and eat more carbohydrates than the plan allows, it may interfere with the process of ketosis and render the diet ineffective. When confronted with such failures, representatives of low carb diet plans have responded that the dieters are in effect not on the diet plan at all and thus it cannot be said that the diet plan failed.



Are Low Carb Diets Safe?
There is much debate over the long-term effects of low carb diets on your health. While they restrict consumption of carbohydrates, they allow generous consumption of animal protein and fat which have been associated with heart disease and other maladies.

Equally important, many of the foods that low carb diets exclude or greatly restrict have been associated with good health.



1 kilocalorie/calorie (kcal/cal) = 4.184 kilojoules/joules (kJ/J)

As you will learn in the topic Calories in Protein, Fat and Carbohydrates, it is commonly said that a gram of fat contains 9 calories. But there are 454 grams in a pound, and 9 x 454 = 4086 calories, not 3500.

A gram of alcohol provides 7 calories



Exercise plays an important role in maintaining a healthy body, and it makes it possible to create a calorie deficit and lose weight without starving your body and slowing your metabolism. But do not look to exercise as your sole method of weight loss.

Think how many times you've heard someone say, "I'll have dessert and work it off later." As our calculators will show you, that dessert can equate to hours of exercise -- something you're not likely to actually do. Better to eat well in the first place.



Exercise is frequently divided into two categories, both of which burn calories:

#1. Aerobic exercise, also called cardiovascular exercise or simply "cardio," causes you to breathe harder and increases your heart rate.
Performed on a regular basis, activities such as running and swimming improve both your respiratory capacity (lungs) and your circulatory system (heart and blood vessels).

#2. Strength building, also called resistance training, increases the proportion of muscle on your body. Examples include weight lifting with free weights and using a machine with variable resistance.
Because muscle is a metabolically active tissue, the more muscular you are the higher your metabolism will be. This means that you will burn more calories even at rest.

this explains why fit people have high metabolism rate.


Dieting often causes you to lose muscle and your metabolism to slow. Not only does exercise burn calories, but exercise -- especially cardio -- causes your metabolism to remain elevated for a period of time after you finish exercising. And strength building exercise builds muscle, which helps to keep your metabolism elevated 24 hours a day.

When we exercise, our bodies require more energy and our metabolism speeds up to supply it. But most of the time we are not very active, and this is the reason people want to raise their metabolism. They want to burn more calories 24/7, even when they are just sitting or sleeping.

Articles written on the subject of raising metabolism often suggest that an increased metabolism is more efficient because it burns more calories. This is true if your goal is to lose weight. But it is interesting to note that an increased metabolism is actually less efficient, requiring more food to maintain body weight. This goes against nature's design for survival.

Even more important is the observation that an increased metabolism has been shown to cause premature aging. You have to ask yourself whether you are willing to have your body run like an automobile in neutral with its engine racing. The alternative, eating healthy foods in reasonable quantities and exercising on a regular basis, would seem the healthier choice.

okay. i dont think i'd want too high a metabolism rate anymore.

Eat Frequently

It is important to understand what happens when you skip a meal or go on a crash diet. When you skip a meal your metabolism slows to conserve your energy. And when you lose weight too quickly for a few days, your body thinks it is threatened with starvation and goes into survival mode. It fights to conserve your fat stores, and any weight loss comes mostly from water and muscle.

Never skip a meal, especially breakfast, and eat healthy snacks between meals. Eating frequently prevents hunger pangs and the binges that follow, provides consistent energy, and may be the single most effective way to maintain metabolism efficiency.

When you will be away from home or work, plan your snacks and take them along so that you will be able to eat regularly and won't be tempted by junk food. This may be good advice for people who stay at home, too.

But remember that it was probably snacking between meals that caused you to become overweight in the first place. It will be very important that any snacks are healthy, that they are pre-portioned so you won't be tempted to overeat, and that meal sizes are reduced to compensate for the additional calories the snacks provide.


so far, i've read up to here and am lazy to continue cos i'm going to bed soon. so for this whole month's posts, most of them will show what i usually do at home when im bored.

ohya. i went to calculate the calories burnt when im singing while sitting down for an hour. 96kcal. lol. everyday sing for an hour also happy.

2358 hrs